William Donohue on Catholics Who Support Abortion: “I Hate Them”

The NY Times today had a very interesting and accurate piece on Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, a man who has been parodied by the likes of South Park and poked fun at by Stephen Colbert. With regards to the events of the past few weeks, Dohohue’s remarks in the Times towards Catholics who support abortion are most unchristian in my view.

“All the secularists feel that their moment has come, and that now is the time to mount the attack on everything they hate.”

That would be people like him, and his church, and whatever decency remains in the American character, he said with a smile and a wink that makes Mr. Donohue likable in person even as he looms, like a cop with a search warrant, over the intersection of American culture and conservative Catholicism. In Mr. Donohue’s world view, atheism is nowhere near as bad as apostasy: he has been most vicious in attacking Catholics who support abortion rights, and he admits it. “I hate them,” he said.

Hate? I think the line in scripture says that they will know we are Christians by our LOVE. And perhaps that is what escapes people like Donohue who prefer adherence to agenda and the single-mindedness of focus on getting their own way over dialogue and compromise.

However, there is something likable about Bill Donohue. He doesn’t take himself too seriously at times including this cheeky bit on Stephen Colbert’s program.

When I was in radio, I would put Donohue on the air with some of the talk show hosts I produced (Joan Hamburg and Bob Grant mostly) simply because he was entertaining. I would get to talk with him off the air and we’d have some friendly banter while we waited for commercials to end. I would like to report that he is a very nice man and the “crazy man act” seems to be just an act–but an effective one–he gets lots of attention.

I often think if he wasn’t so loud the things he complains about would slowly just fade away (or not so slowly). He calls attention to a lot of things that are just innocuous.

I would say I agree with Donohue about 10% of the time–or more accurately I should say his approach. But I will side with him on one thing: There indeed is a lot of anti-Catholic bias out there–perhaps not as much as he thinks and not as much in Hollywood as he thinks–but it is undoubtedly present.

I tweeted the other day that the two last acceptable prejudices are Catholics and fat people.

I added two last words to that tweet: “I’m doomed!”